Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2024, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The impacts of patriarchal social systems on the physical, intellectual, and social lives of both men and women has been well documented in literary criticism. But what happens when the body under inspection is dead? Through a combined lens of feminist and affect theories applied to two tragedies of William Shakespeare, this paper attempts to expand the critical conversation of how society impacts and impedes the growth and autonomy of the gendered body, particularly the feminine body. This paper takes the socially constructed angel woman/monster woman dichotomy as a cornerstone to understand how gender informs social relationships between the self and the world, and how such dichotomies, when ‘stuck' upon bodies, can ultimately lead to the demise of not just the self, but society along with it. From the ‘angelic' Cordelia and Lavinia to their ‘monstrous' counterparts in Goneril, Regan, and Tamora, the women of King Lear and Titus Andronicus all end up dead in the finale, illustrating the inherent danger of the angel/monster dichotomy and other such social categorizations. The destructive ends of these Shakespearean tragedies open the door to deeper understanding of how such socially gendered dichotomies are intended function, and the disastrous consequences of their lived reality.

Committee: James Marino (Committee Chair); Rachel Carnell (Committee Chair); Brooke Conti (Committee Chair) Subjects: Literature

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2022, Psychology

News coverage of scandalous behavior in the present-day media is at an all-time high and being caught up in a widely covered scandal can have serious consequences for those involved. In most cases, being exposed as a perpetrator of scandal can do untold damage to one's career and reputation. But for some, being caught in a scandal has few consequences, leaving the perpetrator virtually unaffected by news of their behavior going public. While previous research has pointed to several predictors than can produce different reactions to scandal, like the gender of the perpetrator and the type of scandal, they do little to explain why such variables produce different reactions. The current research seeks to bridge this gap and explores people's pre-existing expectations about whether a scandal will occur as a driving factor for why some reactions to scandal are more severe than others. Two theories predicting separate and opposite mechanisms by which expectations would affect the perceived scandalousness of a scandalous behavior were considered. Specifically, it was predicted that the more a transgresssion was expected to occur, (1) the more unsurprised people would be by news of the scandal rendering judgments of it less scandalous (decision affect theory) and (2) the more they expected the transgression to occur, the more they would believe that the scandal actually occurred, rendering judgments of it more scandalous (self-validation theory). Results of two studies provide evidence that both of these hypothesized pathways play a role in determining how scandalous a perpetrator's behavior is perceived to be.

Committee: Richard Petty (Advisor); Russ Fazio (Committee Member); Duane Wegener (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology; Social Psychology

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2021, Religious Studies

This thesis seeks to bring together three separate, yet ever-communicating entities -- the healthcare (HC) patient, the healthcare system (HCS), and the HC chaplain. Utilizing wisdom from feminist, postcolonial, and affect theorists, this thesis seeks to conceptualize and visualize this triad dynamic. The format is non-traditional in that concepts are expressed and developed through both an art installation and in written form. Largely diagnostic, this work highlights what it is like to be “other” concerning something as personal as bodily illness, how the HCS and its' relationship to capitalist society contributes to the “othering” of chronically ill patients, and how the HC chaplain may also be an “other” who can potentially mediate the relationship between the HCS and the patient.

Committee: Timothy Beal PhD (Committee Chair); Brian Clites PhD (Committee Member); William Deal PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Religion

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Theatre

This study focuses on race, sexuality, and gender in relation to the reading and performance of Shakespearean drama. Taking an intersectional approach, I bring to bear a wide range of theoretical and critical approaches, including scholarship across the fields of affect and queer theory and critical race, performance, and transgender studies in order to explore contemporary failures to account for difference in the reading, editing, and performing of Shakespeare's plays. In the first chapter I argue that the often-overlooked multiple dimensions of the affect generated by the performance of female actors, what I call affective complexity, in plays such as "Measure for Measure," "Titus Andronicus," and "Othello" is valuable and in fact frequently central to an audience's reception of a play. In the second chapter I argue for a more inclusive view of sexuality in "Romeo and Juliet" through an interrogation of the editorial emendations in several contemporary editions, each of which assume heteronormative readings of the play that ignore its queer performance history. In my third chapter I argue that the underlying antiblack dialectic embedded in "Othello" necessitates its careful reading through the lens provided by critical race theory in order to understand the way the play frames itself as a conversation about the ontological status of Black humanity. The fourth chapter explores readings of "Hamlet" and "Twelfth Night" through the lens of transgender rage, a perspective that makes clear that the rage expressed by characters such as Shylock, Hamlet, and Malvolio are the result of the failure of their “disguises”: the denial of their characters to express their chosen gender presentation. Finally, the conclusion discusses the benefits and challenges of my own attempts as a director to experiment with nontraditional casting within performances of Shakespeare's plays by exploring the potentiality within them for nonbinary and transgender presence.

Committee: Ana Puga (Advisor); Shannon Winnubst (Committee Member); Jennifer Higginbotham (Committee Member); William Worthen (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; Black Studies; British and Irish Literature; Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Fine Arts; Gender Studies; History; Literature; Pedagogy; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2017, French, Italian, and Classical Studies

This thesis, written in English, proposes an ethico-affective theory of the sound event in film in an effort to rethink the relationship of film and spectator in terms of listening. The movements of the argument progress through an analysis of a two-minute scream from Maiwenn's 2011 film, Polisse, that works to demonstrate the ways in which resonances in theoretical language on film, sound, affect and music, specifically as they relate to the interstice from Gilles Deleuze's Cinema 2: the Time-Image, help us to think of the spectator in terms of her active participation in film's material. This step away from cinematographic analysis forces us to scrutinize the methods through which film directly affects the senses of its spectators in ways that confound their ability to "read" the image. As such affections, as Baruch Spinoza suggests, influence how the spectator perceives her own capacity to act in the world, this thesis concludes that listening for sound events in film allows us to perceive the ethical dimensions of film and spectatorship.

Committee: Elisabeth Hodges (Advisor); Jonathan Strauss (Committee Member); Mack Hagood (Committee Member) Subjects: Ethics; Film Studies; Mass Media; Motion Pictures; Music

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2014, Educational Leadership

The lives of college students who are HIV positive in the United States have received little attention. This study addressed this lack by inquiring into the self-cultivation and institutional experiences of gay college men living with HIV. Informed by AIDS activism and queer theory, I used narrative and arts-based methods to explore participants' self-cultivation I placed particular focus on participants' discourse given that American sociopolitical discourse associates HIV/AIDS with gay men. I conducted over sixty hours of in-depth interviews with nine gay college men of various ages, races, geographic locations, and institutional settings. Six of the nine participants created artwork to express their relationship to HIV/AIDS. Using poststructural narrative analysis, the major findings of this study include: higher educational silence about HIV/AIDS; an affective structure to participants' discourse; and an askesis of shame. Most participants encountered a silence or lack of discourse around HIV/AIDS in their institutions. Institutional silence complicated participants' ability to discern whether to seek support or to disclose their HIV status on campus. Although participants called upon distinct discourses, they shared a common affective structure. Having an affective structure means that these men represented and discussed HIV/AIDS as driving the way they live, although differently at different times and with various intensities determined by different events, objects and people. Like affect, their relationship with HIV varied, often unpredictably, except for its constant presence. While these men felt differently about having HIV, I describe their common affective structure as an askesis of shame. Askesis, or self-cultivation, is a response to social contempt for gay men with HIV/AIDS and homonormative discourses of compulsory happiness. Shame is an affect involving investment in the self and others along with covering discredited aspect (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elisa Abes (Committee Chair); Peter Magolda (Committee Member); Lisa Weems (Committee Member); Madelyn Detloff (Committee Member) Subjects: Glbt Studies; Higher Education; Higher Education Administration

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, Art/Art History

Recent anthropological theory suggests that miniatures have a powerful role in affecting human perception and identity formation. Likewise, photographs have long been acknowledged as having captivating power over the people who view them. The artistic value of miniatures, however, has been contested and photographs of miniatures are often thought of as endearing rather than evocative. This thesis argues instead that the photographic process amplifies the transformative power of the miniature. In this thesis, theories of miniaturization, object agency, and affect are applied in an investigation of Lori Nix’s photography series The City. Nix crafts tiny miniature dioramas to form the sets of her photographs, depicting interior scenes of a destroyed city. Works like Living Room, Subway, and Library spark explorations of human-miniature and human-photograph exchange. Utilizing theoretical lenses, this series is approached in a segmented fashion—as objects, as photographs, and as locations for interactions and psychophysical exchanges. Through this analysis, the vast and nuanced potential of such objects (whether miniature, photographic, or both) becomes evident. With miniature objects, viewers can, through lived corporeal knowledge and experience, imagine what it would be like to hold, examine, and interact with the contents of Nix’s works. Viewers are able to draw comparisons with their own bodies, with their surroundings, and with life-size versions of the same types of objects in order to better explore and understand the works presented. As photographs, Lori Nix’s works remove viewers from the actual objects—able to see but not touch, interpret the miniatures’ actual size but not know for certain—and their processes of thought and investigation are disrupted by format. The objects within objects and worlds within worlds afforded by the works that comprise The City allow for new investigations of the powe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrew Hershberger PhD (Advisor); Stephanie Langin-Hooper PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, English

Moving the Common Sensorium: A Rhetoric of Social Movements and Pathē contributes to the rhetorical theorization of how historical events, cultural institutions, and social practices are shaped through affect and emotion, and in turn, how they shape the very conditions of possibility for pathē. This project seeks a more precise account of and language for what Daniel Gross calls the “[emotional] contours of a dynamic social field” and what Martin Heidegger, in referring to Aristotle’s account of pathē, labels “the everydayness of Being with one another.” Although such phrases point toward theoretically fecund ground, they also indicate the terminological difficulty encountered at the intersection of rhetoric, pathē, and structures of the social. The common sensorium, theorized as an affective and emotional analogue to common sense, is advanced as a concept to help elucidate the dynamics occurring at this intersection. Whereas common sense refers to the tacit logics of everyday living, the common sensorium refers to a cultural ambient of emotional norms. In order to examine the contours of the common sensorium, I turn to social movements, which I argue are primarily attempts to shift collective affective and emotional orientations—in other words, attempts to move the common sensorium. The analysis of each chapter is organized around an apposite ideograph—a key term or slogan particularly potent in binding, defining, and mobilizing collectivities. Specifically, I perform rhetorical analyses of eco-friendly, local, and occupy. Chapter One, “What Moves in a Social Movement,” establishes the project’s methodology and argues that the ideograph can be rendered more conceptually robust and valuable to critics when integrated with insights from affect theory and critical emotion studies. Chapter Two, “A Rhetoric of Collective Guilt: Atonement and the Environmental M (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Wendy Hesford (Advisor); Kay Halasek (Committee Member); Amy Shuman (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Communication Studies (Communication)

This dissertation is interested in affect, or the aspects of social life that make a difference because of the ways we feel them. The happenings of a group working in public health are interpreted using affect theory to trace how disruptions to typical organizing processes happen. Because of its role in shaping social scenes, understanding affect's operation is a potential route towards change, even in situations that seem to be solidly set in one particular form. Instances of the group reworking understandings of their role in addressing health equity and disparities are presented to highlight affect's operations--a force that can lead to positive, negative, or ambiguous change. Feminism informs this research both theoretically and in its commitments to considering the practical implications of learning from this group. Feminist formations of affect are foregrounded by thinking about how bodies are involved in sensing the world as well as the role of love and support in the collectivities of our organizing efforts. The affective movements of the group are traced by sensing the trajectories of the way things are heading, identifying patterns, and accounting for power's role. Implications for communication and organizing in public health theory and practice are offered, calling for public health to engage affective analysis by developing capacities for self, group, and structural reflection on the sociocultural underpinnings of population health.

Committee: Laura Black (Advisor); Myrna Sheldon (Committee Member); Brittany Peterson (Committee Member); Lynn Harter (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Gender Studies; Health; Organization Theory; Public Health; Systems Science; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Psychology/Industrial-Organizational

Scholars have recently noted that work stress paradoxically requires more and predicts less recovery from that stress. As a result, the people who most need to recover from work stress have the most difficulty doing so. This recovery paradox is both practically pressing and theoretically underexplored. The present study aims to clarify the timing of this paradox (i.e., whether it is the result of daily stress, chronic stress, or both), its underlying mechanisms, and potential solutions. Taking an integrated resource theory and decision-making theory approach, the current model positions personal resources (i.e., energy and negative affect) and leisure decision-making as key mechanisms explaining the recovery paradox. The role of chronic work stress and leisure habits in these processes are also explored. Diary data was collected from working adults (N=83 participants) twice per day, after work and before bed, over the course of two work weeks (N=693 survey days). Multilevel analyses did not support the original model focused on the mechanisms of depleted energy, unsystematic leisure decision-making, and low leisure mental and physical activeness; however, an alternative model was supported, connecting work stress to poor recovery via negative affect, unsystematic leisure decision-making, and low leisure diversity (i.e., low variety in types of leisure activities). Leisure diversity and physical activity were identified as strategies that seem to facilitate recovery even, and perhaps especially, for the highly stressed. Overall, the present results suggest that the recovery paradox (a) manifests quickly but is exacerbated by chronic work stress, (b) may be explained by affective and decision-making mechanisms, and (c) may be combatted with diverse and physically active leisure. These findings provide theoretical detail to the recovery paradox, a new and key observation in the work stress recovery literature, and provide practical recommendations for stressed workers (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Clare Barratt (Committee Co-Chair); Margaret Brooks (Committee Co-Chair); Joseph Furgal (Other); Scott Highhouse (Committee Member); Dara Musher-Eizenman (Committee Member) Subjects: Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

This project examines the centrality of resilience rhetoric in efforts to institutionally instrumentalize video games for addressing mental disability and mental health. Institutions have increasingly turned to video game technologies for addressing mental disability and/or mental health in pedagogical contexts. Yet there has been little critical consideration of the assumptions about mental disability informing these gaming technologies. I suggest that discourses of mental disability, mental health, game design, and institutional implementation construct an affective rhetoric of pain. For example, designers might harm the player for rhetorical effect, and/or highlight how play can minimize pain and foster happiness. These games therefore raise considerations of resilience, or the psychological ability to “bounce back” from traumatic or painful experiences (APA, 2012). Through a multidisciplinary framework of feminist, queer, and crip approaches to video game rhetoric and institutional critique, I trace how neoliberal resilience rhetoric has been used to justify video games for pedagogical and institutional use by managing or mitigating mental disability. I specifically identify a spatial principle I call the resiliency paradox: a normative and dominant rhetorical logic that normalizes pain and/or violence under the pretense that a space is safe. The resiliency paradox sustains ableist institutional structures and game design principles by denying institutional reform. By examining, critiquing, and ultimately rejecting the resiliency paradox, I identify opportunities for resistance through play while affirming differential movements through institutional space.

Committee: Wendy Hesford (Committee Chair); Margaret Price (Committee Member); Ben McCorkle (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Literacy; Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Political Science

Serving to preserve sovereignty, guarantee survival, and facilitate freedom of action, national security is arguably the lead objective of the state. In contrast, moral norms are commonly held international rules built on morality that, among other effects, can inhibit states in their pursuit of that primary goal. The question posed here, then, is why states would willingly make national-security sacrifices for moral-normative reasons. And yet they do. In numerous wars, militaries have chosen to forego attacks on tactically and operationally valuable targets to protect civilian lives. Additionally, in militarized conflicts from World War I to the Gulf War and beyond, political and military leaders have selected their weapons not only by military value but also by categorization, what some scholars call “taboos.” These moral norms of civilian immunity and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) taboos appear to play a substantial role in state conduct, as shown by the wide-ranging statements of policymakers and commanders and real-world practical constraint. However, experimental research indicates a striking willingness among the public to both violate civilian immunity and use weapons of mass destruction if they appear militarily effective. In prior studies where participants make ex ante and post hoc evaluations of norm-violating attacks on terrorist and conventional adversaries, large numbers of participants—in some cases, well over half—endorse civilian-killing nuclear strikes. This discrepancy in findings derives in part from incomplete specification of how moral norms exist and function at the decision-making level, where adherence to, or violation of, the moral norm is determined. This dissertation uses a dual-process theory of affect and cognition to describe decision-makers' moral-normative and national-security attitudes and their effects on wartime decision-making. Moral norms appear as affect-dominant attitudes, supported overwhelmingly by feelings an (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Herrmann (Advisor); Christopher Gelpi (Committee Member); Alexander Wendt (Committee Member) Subjects: International Relations; Military Studies; Political Science

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Medical Humanities and Social Sciences

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the types of metaphors that are used to construct meaning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The thesis is founded on affect theory to explain how experience becomes objectified into a metaphor as a source mediating between a teller and an audience. I also use rhetorical narrative theory as a source for why affective experiences, such as describing COVID-19, is turned into a narrative that includes metaphor. Fictionality is also an instrumental theory for connecting how experiences are objectified and how fictionality thus produces a particular rhetoric. In illuminating such theories, I will be exploring the use of weather metaphors which are used by scientists and social scientists to explain complex events. I determine that while some metaphors are actually beneficial in describing complex scientific happenings as in the instance of the metaphor “cytokine storm” which allows for meaningful connection between scientists and the general population, others may create a dangerous rhetoric as seen in war metaphors. However, weather metaphors can also be deceiving by alluding that an event is a natural event when it is perpetuated by mankind. I will also explore the use of war metaphors which rely heavily on the body politic as a battleground for COVID-19 events. These metaphors are explained within the contexts of affect theory, rhetorical narrative theory, and fictionality. By illuminating the work that is done through metaphors which are operating as a mediator between affective experience and affective response between teller and audience, the meanings that become constructed around such narratives take shape. It is through metaphors that the complexities of pandemic culture within the U.S. is recognized and understood.

Committee: James Phelan (Advisor); David Horn (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Musicology

Oftentimes, we think of the concepts of the “primitive” and the virtuosic as being unrelated, contradictory, or even diametrically opposed. In rock drumming, however, the concepts can and do overlap. Consider the way that The Who's drummer Keith Moon embodies the wild-man drummer stereotype of the Muppets character Animal in both his persona and his performance style while simultaneously executing complicated parts that require a high degree of technical proficiency. In this dissertation, I argue that rock drumming operates as a site where the concepts of the “primitive” and the virtuosic overlap. Before considering drumming's relationship to each concept individually, I dive into drumming's complex relationship to the body and embodiment, through which I develop a theory of rock drumming based on patterns of tension and release called the Tonic Beat Pattern Theory (henceforth “the Theory”). Each chapter demonstrates how the Theory can be applied through an in-depth analysis of a single rock song that sheds light on that chapter's concept. The culminating chapter uses the Theory to demonstrate Keith Moon's ability to embody “controlled chaos” in his drumming style. In any band, the drummer is the main driver of rhythm and groove. Drummers cause us to move, shake, twist, and mosh along to the music that gives meaning to our lives. Scholars have only begun to scratch the surface of uncovering the power of the drums and considering the moves that drummers make in their analyses. This dissertation offers a model of how to analyze the ways that drummers contribute to affect, narrative, and meaning in rock music. It begins to uncover why rock drumming matters.

Committee: Daniel Goldmark PhD (Advisor); Susan McClary PhD (Committee Member); David Rothenberg PhD (Committee Member); William Deal PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; European History; European Studies; History; Modern History; Music; Performing Arts

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Leadership Studies

Educators are important in the academic and social development of students. Educator perceptions carry significant weight when interpreting behaviors, skills, and abilities of students (Beckford, 2016; Simson, 2013). Research that investigates the possible consequences of educator perceptions of African American males and the relationship of those perceptions to student outcomes is scant. This exploratory sequential research study reported psychometric properties of an instrument developed to examine educator perceptions of African American males held by public educators in PreK12. Extant research suggests that educator perceptions of Black males are more negative than those of noneducators (see Foster, 1995; Quinn, 2017). Specifically, overall perceptions of educators regarding African American males are negative (Fitzgerald, 2009; Foster, 1995; Jackson & Crawley, 2003). The instrument created for the present study will guide future research that will enable researchers to examine the relationships between educator perceptions and outcomes for African American male students (e.g., eligibility in special education for EBDs). Examining validity evidence for the public educator perceptions of African American males survey (PEPAAMS) PreK12 revealed significant relationships between educators (1) answering on behalf of the average person and (2) self-reporting personal perceptions. This study also found that the adapted brief social desirability scale did not function as intended. The ABSDS was not a reliable measure to differentiate which dependent variable is best to use when there were different scores for personal and average perceptions of public educators using a paired samples t-Test and MANOVA. Due to the inadequacy of the ABSDS, findings revealed that personal value statements were a better indicator for determining which perceptions scores were more reliable to use. Finally, this study concluded that educators who were truly low prej (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Patrick D. Pauken Dr. (Advisor); Alicia Mrachko Dr. (Other); Philip T.K. Daniel Dr. (Committee Member); Paul A. Johnson Dr. (Committee Member); Matthew Lavery Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; African American Studies; African Americans; African History; Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Ethnic Studies; Gender; Legal Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, English

The power and intimacy of Wallace's narrative voices allow him to affect his readers powerfully on multiple levels: cognitively, linguistically, and affectively. The Voices of David Foster Wallace: Comic, Encyclopedic, and Sincere offers a systematic analysis of Wallace's poetics of voice, identifying a dominant voice for each, pinpointing its techniques and influences, and casting it in a career arc of Wallace's evolving novelistic purposes. The careful shaping of voice is central to Wallace's distinctive prose and its impact on contemporary American fiction. The project identifies Wallace's three dominant voices—comic, encyclopedic, and sincere—and shows how voice identifies not just the particular agent communicating with the reader but creates a global atmosphere in texts, deeply shaping our experiences and interpretations. Drawing on and refining James Phelan's model of voice for Wallace's fiction, I define voice as the synthesis of values, tone, style, and rhythm, elements that come together in complex ways to create the gestalt effect of narrative voice. I develop tools for examining the micro elements that create the macro quality of the reading experience—helping illuminate how Wallace uses voice to “rewire” the way readers see and feel, changing our relation to language and to the world. Further, I emphasize the sonic dimension of reading whereby Wallace's sentence and paragraph rhythms impact the cognition of readers, thus joining the recent turn in literary studies toward reading with the grain, by advancing and synthesizing approaches to rhetoric, affect, formalism, and literary phenomenology. The picture of Wallace that emerges from my analysis is one of uncertainty (and ambition) regarding his place in the literary world, a restless desire to add more voices to his repertoire. Adopting comedy, knowledge, and finally emotional depth as his purposes, Wallace progressively widens his ideal audience, reaching readers in a variety of ways in his ongoing pr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Brian McHale (Advisor); James Phelan (Committee Member); Sandra Macpherson (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Language; Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, English

This thesis investigates how writing-related dispositions develop by turning to a theory of accumulative affect while at the same time employing queer and feminist epistemologies to examine the role of emotion in learning. A mixed methods survey of ENG 111 students at Miami University reveals the deeply affective and emotional experiences with writing that students bring to the classroom that impact their writing. Participants' narrative responses show that affective experiences with writing are often attached to specific individuals, processes related to writing, and writing assessment. These associations often impact how they approach the writing process, as well as their self-conceptions of themselves as writers. Implications for classroom instructors are also discussed in order to recommend consideration of accumulative affect in pedagogy, in addition to methodological recommendations for studying emotion and affect.

Committee: Jason Palmeri PhD (Committee Chair); Heidi McKee PhD (Committee Member); Elizabeth Wardle PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Literacy; Pedagogy; Rhetoric

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Arts and Sciences: English

This research investigated the relationship between digital media composing practices and feelings, specifically turning to authors of digital media texts and books in the field of rhetoric and composition. My primary purpose was to understand the extent to which digital composing is an embodied, felt experience, thereby articulating how authors feel about drafting, coding, designing and revising scholarly projects for digital environments. Theories of digital rhetoric and emotion supported a framework for analyzing a range of authors' behind-the-scenes articles (VanKooten; Sheridan) and “practitioner stories” (Ridolfo) about digital composing. In order to capture the affective complexities and workflows of authors composing digital texts, qualitative methods were necessary for this research. More than 20 authors participated in semi-structured interviews or online questionnaires. Methods that stemmed from digital rhetoric practitioner research and emotion studies positioned me to interview authors, take stock of their composing practices (e.g., sharing screen recordings; drafts of documents), and co-review data generated from interviews and observations (e.g., participants reviewed transcripts and responded). Presenting six case studies supported by ancillary interviews and survey data, my research suggests that responding to reviewer feedback and coding a digital media text are the most painful parts of the rhetorical-affective workflow. Research also suggests that collaborating with vertical and horizontal mentors (e.g., editors and peers) and delivering a text in public are the most pleasurable. Consequently, my research implicates the support systems (or lack thereof) and editorial workflows that make digital media production possible.

Committee: Laura Micciche Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christopher Carter Ph.D. (Committee Member); Russel Durst Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric

BA, Oberlin College, 2019, Comparative American Studies

This thesis draws upon recent works in feminist theory, epistemological theory, affect theory, and abolitionist theory to critically engage with contemporary U.S. forms of “carceral feminism,” Elizabeth Bernstein's (2010) concept that describes the recasting of feminist politics in carceral terms. I expand upon Bernstein to contend that we must direct attention to our epistemic and affective conditions to understand our investments in carceral feminism. I begin by mapping the origins of carceral feminism, first tracing its history through a discussion of the initial iterations of colonialism and enslavement. Turning to a more recent timeline of the mainstream feminist anti-violence movement—a predominantly white and liberal project—I consider the battered women's movement's reliance upon the state in the 1960s, the burgeoning of neoliberalism in the 70s, and the rape law reforms in the 80s. Positioning 1994 as a seismic genealogical moment in carceral feminism, I examine the rhetoric and implementation of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 before introducing my case study: the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the nation's largest anti-violence nonprofit. I conduct a discourse analysis of RAINN's website to demonstrate how it reifies the organization's epistemic claims of punishment as justice just as it affectively persuades its visitors to endorse its carceral feminist agenda. I further wager healing is fundamental to carceral feminism. Focusing on RAINN's “Survivor Series” YouTube playlist, I interrogate how the organization displays and utilizes survivors' trauma narratives. Employing an analysis of affective moments as intensified by RAINN, namely through maneuvers of the camera, I reason that RAINN frames and operationalizes the survivors' discussions of justice, healing, and disclosure to concretize a neoliberal understanding of intimate violence and redress. I conclude by urging for an epistemic and affective de-linking, or divest (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Wendy Kozol (Advisor); KJ Cerankowski (Committee Member); Gina M. Perez (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Criminology; Gender Studies

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2018, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

During the eighteenth-century, philosophers gave primacy to rationality specifying that reason could and should control emotions; they observed a friction between thought and feeling, rational and irrational, emotion and cognition, mind and body, which competed and united in a way that influenced the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century thought and experience on many sides. As an early nineteenth-century novelist, Jane Austen explores the relationship between emotion and cognition. I argue that Austen shows the importance of bodily experience of emotion in moral development. Deploying affect theory will illuminate Austen's depiction of emotions as a mode of understanding of how the body becomes the place for knowledge and experience.

Committee: Rachel Carnell Dr. (Committee Chair); Adam Sonstagard Dr. (Committee Member); Gary Dyer Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature